The avacado
by speakingwordsofwisdom
Summary: This was going to be a songfic, but it didnt happen. Basically just a gelphie as friends fic, which is pretty rambly and pointless but hopefully worth reading still :


**Disclaimer: Anyone who believes I own Wicked or all the members of Belle and Sebastian is labouring under some serious delusions about how much I earn doing my paper route.**

**R&R, wonderful people :)**

**

"Elphie, come outside?"

Elphaba capped her pen and twirled her chair around to face her room-mate. Glinda was lying across her bed and experimenting with her hair, using several biros to hold it into place.

"Why?"

"Why do you have to ask why? Its just the first really sunny day we've had for, like, a year."

Elphaba considered. "You could go without me? Then I'd have a chance of finishing this?"

"Oh come on, Elphie! Do you want to waste your life studying?"

"Yes. Why are you so eager to hang out with me all of a sudden anyway? Pfannee and Fiyero are here."

"I know. But it's so boring hanging out with them..."

"Miss Glinda, you shock me! A queen bored with her subjects?"

Elphaba caught the pillow that Glinda had flung at her and tossed it back.

"You know what I mean, Elphie. With Pfannee and everyone its all ooh_ Glinda you're so good, you're so pretty, you're so amazing, tell us every detail of your life so we can copy it! Lets talk __about your hair...or your nails! Or your hair....or your nails!"_

Glinda paused, and Elphaba shook her head sarcastically.

"Wow, being adored...that must be tough..."

"I didn't say it was tough, I said it was boring...which it is. You're the only person in this whole city with a mind of their own."

"I'm flattered."

"You should be. Now are you coming, or am I going to have to annoy you some more?"

"If I tell you to go away, are you going to find me more intriguing?"

"Elphie, we both know you're going to come with me eventually so you can either waste half an hour sulking while I persuade you, or you can come now and sulk outside."

"Why are you so convinced I'll give in?"

"Because i'm irresistible?"

"Right."

"Because otherwise I'll paint your nails pink while you're asleep tonight?"

"Ok, ok, i'm coming..."

"Who ever said threats don't work?"

*

Once the news had spread that the resident Miss Popularity was actually hanging out with the green freak, it seemed that every clique had to walk past, just to see it with their own eyes.

Neither girl was particularly bothered, both being used to being stared at.

After the third artichoke comment in half an hour, Elphaba looked up from her book with a small frown.

"I think I need to do something about my title"

Glinda bit her lip, suddenly feeling like the worst friend in the world. Why hadn't she said anything to those morons? Why had she acted as if their stupid comments were normal?_ Because they were normal_, a voice in the back of her mind said softly. It wasn't just today- Elphaba had to put up with it her whole life.

"I know, Elphie, i'm so sorry... I know it doesn't do much about the others, but do you want me to start a rumour about that last guy? I could tell everyone about the time he got very drunk and came onto Professor Dillamond..."

"O-kay..." Elphaba raised her eyebrows at this new piece of information. "That's not the sort of thing I meant, but lets come back to the Professor Dillamond story later. I need to here how THAT ends... Actually, I meant i'm sick of being an artichoke. There's plenty of other green things out there I could be named after... why does it have to be artichoke? I've never even seen an artichoke..."

"What? Elphie, why does it have to be anything? Why do you have to be called anything except Elphaba?"

Elphaba looked over at her friend with a half pitying expression on her face. "That's just how it works. You have to accept it sooner or later."

"No! Why do I have to accept you getting abused every day, just because of your skin? I refuse to accept it!" Glinda scrambled to her feet. "They think they can look down on you...I've been to every party ever thrown at Shiz, and I've seen almost everybody here completely wasted...oh I have some stories about them..."

Elphaba had been trying to keep a straight face, but then she couldn't help laughing; Glinda looked so passionate, as if she was going to go right that minute to spread gossip as her own personal form of vigilante justice. Also....also it was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever been prepared to do for her. In all her years, Elphaba couldn't remember anyone -ever- sounding so angry on her behalf.

"Don't laugh, i'm serious!"

"I'm not laughing..." Elphaba pulled Glinda back down onto the grass. "Thanks for the offer, but right now i'm fine. Hold the thought, though... I want something more interesting than artichoke, something more exotic..."

"Hmmmm" Glinda tried to concentrate "Jade? Emerald?"

Elphaba shook her head. "No...too normal sounding...i think it still has to be a vegetable, actually, so everyone can catch on..."

"Um...asparagus is green? Celery is green?"

"I said I wanted something BETTER than artichoke."

"Welllll....what about avocado? They're slightly more exoticy."

"That's actually bearable... I think. I'd definitely rather be the avocado than the artichoke"

"See my untapped genius."

They were interrupted when a flurry of students swept by, pausing only to shriek "Omigod, it's the artichoke girl!" before dissolving into laughter.

Glinda couldn't get over how composed Elphaba was- nothing ever seemed to bother her. She didn't look angry, she didn't even look hurt. She sat up, swept her hair out of her eyes and fixed an unblinking gaze upon them.

"Actually, you have it wrong."

"Huh?"

"I'm not _the artichoke_ any more. I'm _the avocado_ for the summer. But don't worry. I'll go back to being an artichoke for the winter term..."

They just stared at her. Elphaba sighed impatiently, and waved a hand at them.

"Okay, okay, You can go! Go back to whatever it was you were doing before!"

When they scattered, they looked to Glinda like schoolchildren dismissed by a teacher.

There was no doubt about it; Elphaba Thropp definitely had style.

*

"Omigod, Glinda, what are you doing with the freak?!"

Glinda flung away her sunglasses and glared at Fiyero. "Okay, i'm sick of this! What exactly-"

Elphaba cut her off with a smile. "Do you really want to know, Fiyero?"

"Um-"

She leant towards him, and lowered her voice. "I'm absorbing the sun... it's like photosynthesis, its how I stay alive, like plants. That's why i'm green..."

"What?!" Glinda stared at her in horror, and Fiyero made his escape. "Is it-"

She cut her question short when Elphaba burst out laughing.

"I can't believe you just made all that up!"

"And you believed me too! I can't believe you actually were going to ask me if it was true!"

"Elphie, it'll be all over Shiz by this evening!"

"I know- I want to see how many people actually believe it.... Which, judging your reaction, will be quite a few...What?"

Glinda was looking at her with the strangest expression.

"Do you really not care, Elphie?"

"I used to. Then I started acting like I didn't, because if I told myself I didn't care, then they couldn't hurt me so much."

"And now?"

"When you're alone, everything that everyone says matters. Just because you don't have anyone to contradict them. And now i'm not alone any more, cos you're here. So nothing that they say matters. Hey, what do you want to say to the next person?"

"We could tell him we're pregnant?"

"You really do have untapped genius..."

*

By evening, the sun had started to sink, and the shafts of light between the trees glowed gold.

Glinda tossed her sun glasses away and propped herself up on one elbow to survey the campus. It was, except for them, completely deserted.

She turned to Elphaba, about to say something, before she realised that she was asleep.

Perhaps it was the light, perhaps it was something else, but at that moment she seemed to glow, her skin almost the exact shade as the blades of grass.

And perhaps she had never thought of her roommate as being beautiful before, just as Elphaba herself had never thought of herself as beautiful, but, looking at her lying in the grass, with the late sunlight slanting across her face, suddenly she was.

**Okay, i'm not even sure what I intended this story to come to. I know its just a long rambling thing withoout a point, but if you could let me know what you think, i'd be really happy and everything. Also, if you hate it, it'll stop me posting more bad stories.**

**FYI, this was never intended as a Gelphie fic, except as friends.**


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